Gray Trampled Grass. Gray Snow
Sat, 01/22/2011 - 20:06 — theis
When you enter the gallery's first room you meet a visually open and straightforward conceptual installation, consisting of a series of glass sheets in large formats. Each of them has an equally levelled horizon line sanded into the surface, and they are all mounted on black gallery walls. The viewer is immediately involved and included in the installation by means of the glass sheets’ heavy mirroring effect. At the same time, the scratched lower half of the glasses compels the viewer's eye to also zoom in on the work's tactility and materiality. The installation is thus communicating and in motion and leads the viewer to reflect both upon his own presence and the work itself.
The installation in the gallery's second room is otherwise exclusionary and claustrophobic, but it retains simplicity due to a serial repetition of printed, transparent banners. The motif is a mass event, a photograph of a demonstration. The photographs are post-processed so that all individual characteristics are removed. Signs, banners and faces are airbrushed away, left is a faceless crowd facing an unknown destination. The visual experience is flickering and mirage-like. The banners hang as room dividers surrounding the viewer, thus placing him in the middle of the postulated mass assembly. Rather than adding or contributing, the two installations investigate the potential of removing elements from the expected shape – thereby leaving the exhibition as a void.
Installation views
